The Royal Navy is considering nuclear-powered surface ships that could stay at sea for years.

As part of what is understood to be a “long-term” plan, the Navy has asked the defence industry to explore nuclear power on its surface ships.

In the UK, nuclear propulsion is only used on submarines, however the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) for updates on the use of Generation IV, an advanced nuclear technology.

The request will look at how Generation IV nuclear technologies, including larger nuclear reactors and micro-modular reactors, could power surface fleets.

The US has a number of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, including Nimitz and Gerald R. Ford-class ships. France’s Charles de Gaulle carrier is also nuclear-powered.

At a cost of $13 billion (£10 billion), the nuclear-powered USS Gerald R. Ford was commissioned in 2017 and is the US navy’s newest and costliest warship.

The Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, cost £3 billion each. Commissioned in 2017, they are powered by gas and diesel engines. 

Both ships have been hit by malfunctions since they launched. HMS Queen Elizabeth was forced to pull out of the largest Nato exercise since the Cold War in February due to an issue with a propeller shaft.

In 2022, HMS Prince of Wales was forced to pull out of exercises with the US Navy after breaking down off the Isle of Wight due to a similar malfunction.

Tom Sharpe, a former Navy commander, described the RFI as “prudent planning” by the MoD, although cautioned the costs behind such a development.

“It isn’t about building a fleet of nuclear-powered cruisers any time soon,” he said. “That there is someone in a corner of the Naval Headquarters looking this far ahead, and not getting consumed by the day-to-day running of the fleet, is good news.”

‘Nuclear power all about cost vs gains’

He added: “Nuclear power in ships is all about cost vs operational gains. 

“In submarines, the gains are massive, which is why many are powered that way. In surface ships the operational gain is much less and so cost comes in earlier.”

The Government’s “Net Zero Strategy”, published in 2021, reinforced the importance of nuclear in the UK’s energy as it transitions to net zero by 2050.

The MoD’s request is an information-gathering exercise conducted in line with the Defence and Security Industrial Strategy (DSIS), according to the UK Defence Journal.

The RFI, which has a deadline of Oct 9 this year, adds: “The primary objective is to gather detailed information on GEN-4 nuclear-reactor designs, their feasibility for large surface ships (including support vessels and surface combatants), and the potential benefits and challenges associated with their use.”

Mr Sharpe added: “There is a gross tonnage above which this ratio changes in favour of nuclear propulsion, and it’s about 80,000 tons. This is why US carriers at 100,000 tons have it and ours, at 65,000 tons do not.”

He added that the Charles de Gaulle, which sits at 42,000 tons, is an expensive anomaly to be nuclear-powered.

“However, if Gen IV reactors are that much smaller, safer, more powerful and with less waste as the brochure suggests, then it’s possible the tonnage point at which nuclear propulsion becomes viable could change substantially,” Mr Sharpe said.

The RFI also highlights the need for detailed technical information. It says: “The Royal Navy is seeking information regarding integrating Generation-4 nuclear technologies for surface ship employment. Exploring scopes for alternative energy paradigms, the Royal Navy is gathering information on energy solutions for powering large surface ships.”

Pete Sandman, a Navy expert who runs the Navy Lookout blog, said he doubted the UK will see a nuclear-powered vessel in the near future, due to the “enormous overheads” that would come with instilling and maintaining such advanced technology.

“Nuclear propulsion comes with enormous overheads, maintenance, regulations and once you go nuclear things become way more expensive and complicated,” he said.

“You have nuclear regulatory bodies, people have to be trained to a very high standard and have 24-hour watches. Although infinite power comes with lots of downsides, for a surface ship, the case is less clear cut.”

A couple who were accused of harassing their neighbours by chanting and pointing their fingers while on a nearby beach were praying, a court has heard.

Nigel and Sheila Jacklin have been embroiled in an 11-year row with their neighbour, sparked by “noisy” building work.

The spat in the town of Bexhill-on-Sea, in East Sussex, saw the couple banned from looking into the home of neighbour Dr Stephane Duckett and his partner.

Earlier this year, they were again accused of “chanting, staring and sticking their fingers up” at their neighbour and his partner from a nearby beach. Both were charged with harassment, but claimed the chanting and finger-pointing were part of Mrs Jacklin’s Hindu prayer routine.

Mr Jacklin, 62, was also charged with assaulting a female friend of their neighbours during a separate row outside his £600,000 home.

All charges against the Jacklins – which they denied – were dropped on Tuesday when they appeared before magistrates in Brighton. They pleaded not guilty to harassment of their neighbour. Mrs Jacklin, 61, said the chanting, staring and movement of her fingers were a part of her Sanskrit mantras. Mr Jacklin also pleaded not guilty to an assault.

The Crown Prosecution Service had requested an adjournment, which was refused by the court – meaning no evidence was offered. The Jacklins were told they were “free to go”.

Mr Jacklin, a statistician and market researcher, said: “We are feeling relieved, elated and p—– off. This should never have gone to court.

“This is the fourth time my wife has been investigated for praying on the beach. We’ve been investigated 12 times, with no action taken against us in any case. That’s not a series of police mistakes – that is abuse of police power.”

Mr Jacklin, a councillor, said the couple had spent “tens of thousands of pounds” in legal fees over the repeated police investigations and court battles.

The row began in 2013 when Dr Duckett and Norinne Betjemann, his partner, bought a 120-year-old, disused glass glazing workshop opposite their house. The couple, from London, then set about converting it into a £400,000 weekend holiday home.

Mr and Mrs Jacklin made a series of complaints about their neighbours to the authorities, including noisy builders, verbal abuse and light pollution.

The Jacklins were then sent a community protection warning letter by Rother District Council. They were also banned from entering an “exclusion zone” around the property owned by Dr Duckett and Ms Betjemann.

In July last year, the Jacklins reported their neighbours for harassment when they claimed Mrs Jacklin was filmed as she tried to pray.

In September that year, Mr Jacklin claims he was assaulted after a friend of Dr Duckett approached them on the beach outside their home. As the couple made their way back to the house, Mr Jacklin claims the woman shouted to Mrs Jacklin: “The whole village wishes you were dead.”

He said he approached the woman and she “strangled” him before claiming he assaulted her, which he strongly denies.

He said: “The woman then claimed I bashed her against the fence, kicked her dog and repeatedly headbutted her. It was completely made up. When she throttled me, she came at me again and I put my hand out to stop her. That was the only contact we had.”

Mr Jacklin said CCTV footage of the three minutes in which the assault took place were never found, despite a request by his solicitors.

‘We should stand against abuse of power’

He called the ordeal a “spectacular misuse of police time”, adding: “I stood in the general election, and one of the reasons I decided to do so is because the police investigated us and not our neighbours. We should stand against abuse of power.

“My wife’s Hindu faith has helped her get through this. We’ve been there for 30 years and plan to live here forever.”

Dr Duckett has been contacted for comment.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said: “We requested an adjournment in this case in order to discharge our disclosure obligations following late submissions by the defence. Unfortunately, this request was refused by the court and we were regrettably left with no option but to offer no evidence.”

The Jacklins dispute the Crown Prosecution Service comment that there were late submissions by their defence lawyers.

A Sussex Police spokesman said: “Sussex Police conducted a thorough, impartial investigation into multiple reports of harassment, and one reported assault, against three people between July and September 2023.

“Inquiries were conducted without prejudice, including multiple statements from the informants and witnesses, as well as interviews with both suspects.

“Evidence was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, which approved charges of harassment and assault by battery, before no evidence was offered after magistrates declined a request for adjournment from the Crown Prosecution Service.

“Sussex Police will continue to do all it can to protect our communities and secure justice for victims of crime.”

Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan was found guilty of rape by a Swiss appeals court on Tuesday, overturning an earlier acquittal by a lower court.

A Geneva appeals court said it had found the former Oxford University professor, 62, “guilty of rape and sexual coercion” of a woman in a hotel 15 years ago.

It sentenced him to three years in prison, two of them suspended, marking the first guilty verdict he has been handed.

The verdict was slightly more lenient than the three years in prison – half suspended – requested by the prosecutor in the appeals case in May.

“Our client is of course relieved, considering what she has had to endure for the truth to come out,” said Veronique Fontana and Robert Assael, the woman’s lawyers. They added: “The truth has finally triumphed”.

The ruling – dated Aug 28 but only made public on Tuesday – was expected to be appealed at Switzerland’s highest court.

Philippe Ohayon, one of Ramadan’s French lawyers, attacked the “many contradictions” in the judicial process.

Ramadan, a charismatic yet controversial figure in European Islam, has always maintained his innocence.

His accuser, a Muslim convert identified only as “Brigitte”, had testified before the court that he subjected her to rape and other violent sex acts in a Geneva hotel room during the night of Oct 28 2008.

The lawyer representing Brigitte said she was repeatedly raped and subjected to “torture and barbarism”.

Ramadan said that Brigitte invited herself up to his room. He let her kiss him, he said, before quickly ending the encounter.

He said he was the victim of a “trap”.

Similar allegations in France

Brigitte was in her forties at the time of the alleged assault.

She filed a complaint 10 years later, telling the court she felt emboldened to come forward following similar complaints filed against Ramadan in France.

The appeals verdict overturns a lower court finding last year acquitting Ramadan of rape and sexual coercion, citing a lack of evidence, contradictory testimonies and “love messages” sent by the woman after the alleged assault.

But during their appeal, Brigitte’s lawyers alleged that Ramadan had exercised significant “control” over her, suggesting she had suffered something akin to Stockholm syndrome.

The three appeals court judges in Geneva pointed to “witness testimony, certificates, medical notes and private expert opinions consistent with the facts presented by the plaintiff”.

“Elements collected during the investigation have thus convinced the chamber of the guilt of the accused,” the court said in a statement.

Ramadan was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford and held visiting roles at universities in Qatar and Morocco.

He was forced to take leave of absence in 2017 when rape allegations surfaced in France at the height of the Me Too movement.

In France, he is accused of raping three women between 2009 and 2016.

His defence team is fighting a Paris appeals court decision in June that the cases can go to trial.

Landlords will only be allowed to raise rents once a year, and to the market rate, under Labour’s rent reforms outlined on Wednesday.

The Government has said it will “ban” in-tenancy rent increases from being written into contracts in legislation set to come in by next summer.

Currently, if a landlord wants to raise the rent they can either write it into the contract as a yearly set increase, or issue a Section 13 notice when they want to raise it. A tenant can dispute a rent increase – but only after it has been enforced.

Other commitments announced on Wednesday include a ban on rental bidding wars, and a further “ban” on landlords refusing housing benefit claimants or parents as tenants – although this is already illegal.

The Government will also legally require landlords and letting agents to publish an “asking rent” for their property, and prevent them from asking for, encouraging, or accepting any bids above this price.

Labour’s new Renters’ Rights Bill replaces the Conservative’s Renters’ Reform Bill, a manifesto promise which never saw the light of day. The Tories first pledged to ban no-fault evictions in April 2019, under former prime minister Theresa May.

Housing secretary Angela Rayner said: “There can be no more dither and delay. We must overhaul renting and rebalance the relationship between tenant and landlord.

“Renters have been let down for too long and too many are stuck in disgraceful conditions, powerless to act because of the threat of a retaliatory eviction hanging over them.”

Sir Keir Starmer previously hinted at a ban on bidding wars during an election debate in May. He said: “We have to stop the landlords ripping off tenants who are doing this bidding war. We can pass legislation to say you can’t do it because it’s driving rents through the roof.”

The Government on Wednesday also promised to hand out “new investigatory powers” to councils so they can fine “unscrupulous landlords” who do not fix “serious hazards”. Under the new powers, landlords could face fines of up to £7,000.

Section 21, otherwise known as “no-fault evictions”, will also be banned from next summer.

The last government had committed to a court review before abolishing no-fault evictions, to address fears that long waiting times for court hearings could put off landlords from letting out their properties.

However, Labour has not promised to do the same. The bill means landlords could face wait times of more than one year to evict a tenant.

Wait times for court eviction orders reached 55 weeks last year, while bailiff callouts took a further six months, on average, according to data collected by the country’s largest estate agents.

The state of court wait times were laid bare in a document shared with the last government, and now seen by The Telegraph.

Analysis of 10 county courts by the country’s largest estate agents, including Savills, Hamptons and Knight Frank, found it took an average of 55 weeks to obtain a court order for possession in September 2023, nearly double official government data.

The Ministry of Justice does not record processing delays, which make up a significant chunk of the overall time it takes to repossess a property via the courts.

Estate agents also said landlords faced a further six months’ wait for a bailiff to attend a property, leading to an overall wait time of one and a half years to evict a tenant in some cases.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has said “quicker, cheaper” dispute resolution will be encouraged over court action, and that his Government will invest in additional court and tribunal capacity to handle any extra hearings generated by these reforms.

Labour has also said it will ban no-fault evictions for both existing and new tenancies at the same time.

The Conservative government had planned to take a phased approach, applying it to new tenancies first and existing tenancies later.

Polly Neate, chief executive of homelessness charity Shelter, said the Government was right to pull the plug on no-fault evictions, adding: “Section 21 has haunted England’s renters for years now and 11 million of them will breathe a sigh of relief when these unjust evictions are finally consigned to the history books.”

The Department for Housing was approached for comment.

Kamala Harris thanked Donald Trump as the pair shook hands at a 9/11 memorial service in New York hours after their bruising debate.

Joe Biden smiled as the two political rivals reached across him to exchange pleasantries at the event at Ground Zero.

Michael Bloomberg, who was elected as the city’s mayor weeks after the 2001 terror attack, appeared to have orchestrated the encounter, tapping Ms Harris on the shoulder before she turned around and greeted Trump.

Ms Harris appeared to mouth “thank you” several times as the pair shook hands. Trump then used his other hand to pat their handshake before they turned around.

The pair stood a few feet apart for the ceremony, separated by Mr Biden and Mr Bloomberg.

The group was sandwiched between JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, and New York senator and House majority leader Chuck Schumer.

Later today, Trump, Mr Biden and Ms Harris are expected to travel to Pennsylvania for further remembrance events.

Hundreds of people had gathered in New York on Wednesday to pay their respects to the thousands killed in the attacks 23 years ago, with some holding up photos of the victims.

A moment of silence was held at 8.46am to mark the moment that hijacked Flight 11 struck the north tower. Names of victims were read from the podium by relatives, some of whom offered personal testimonials to individual family members.

A second moment of silence was held at 9.03am, when the hijacked Flight 175 struck the south tower.

With paintings of Mickey Mouse and Snow White next to the word “Love” scrawled on a white wall, it has all the hallmarks of an ordinary child’s bedroom.

Yet beneath the Disney characters lies a chamber of horrors where six Israeli hostages were imprisoned, tortured and ultimately executed by Hamas gunmen, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

On Tuesday, the Israeli army released footage of the tunnel in Gaza where it claims the group captured on Oct 7 were killed two weeks ago.

Video footage released by the IDF shows a massive tunnel shaft located inside what appeared to be a children’s bedroom in a home in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza.

The entrance appeared to have been covered by a removable floor. It led to a shaft running 20 metres deep, with four separate ladders to climb down to the main part of the tunnel.

Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman, estimated the narrow tunnel to be 120 metres long, 1.7 metres high and one metre wide. It had no rooms, just a single corridor.

A thick iron door separated the last part of the tunnel in which the hostages were kept for weeks, according to Israeli estimates.

In the video, the first items seen behind the iron door are bottles of urine, some kept in a bag.

A hole has been dug in the ground where a bucket was used as a toilet.

A battery charger hangs from the ceiling. On the floor lies a Koran, women’s clothes, mattresses, AK-47 magazines and a hairbrush.

Finally, a pool of blood is seen on the floor, showing where, according to the IDF, the hostages were executed.

The IDF also said tuna cans, energy bars and a chessboard were found inside the tunnel.

Throughout the war in Gaza, Israeli troops have been uncovering Hamas’s vast network of tunnels.

As well as homes, they have been embedded under schools, hospitals, apartments, mosques and UN facilities.

Many of the remaining 101 hostages are believed to be kept in tunnels similar to the one exposed on Tuesday.

Between two and six terrorists were guarding the hostages, according to Mr Hagari.

“Why murder them in a tunnel after they survived 11 months?” Mr Hagari asks in the video where he conducts a tour of the inside of the tunnel.

The IDF believes two terrorists executed the six hostages on Aug 29 before making their escape from the tunnel.

The bodies of Carmel Gat, 40, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Alex Lobanov, 32, Almog Sarusi, 27, and Ori Danino, 25, were discovered by Israeli forces the following day.

Mr Hagari said they were held in “horrific” conditions.

Mrs Yerushalmi weighed just 36kg (five-and-a-half stone), indicating that she was starved, a form of torture other hostages have testified to after their release or rescue from captivity in Gaza.

Other hostages who made it out alive have revealed they were sexually abused, beaten and psychologically tortured.

After the IDF released the footage from the tunnel, the Hostages Families Forum issued a statement saying the dry blood stains “leave no doubt as for the cruelty of their last moments”.

The six hostages “suffered until their last breath” and “fought for their lives until their death”, the Israel-based campaign group said.

“Hungry, exhausted, tortured, they cling to a single hope: that we will continue fighting for their freedom,” the forum added, before calling on the Israeli government to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

“They trust us to bring them home. Every day in captivity is eternity. Every day that passes is a danger to their lives, hanging by a thread, at the mercy of terrorists capable of the worst crimes against humanity… A deal must be signed NOW!”

Avigdor Lieberman, the former defence minister, and Yisrael Beiteinu, the leader of the opposition party, also reacted strongly to the video, calling for an immediate halt to humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“No food, no water, no cigarettes, no fuel and no goods,” Mr Lieberman said, accusing Hamas of using the same methods to kill Jews as the Nazis.

Mexican legislators approved a controversial judicial overhaul on Wednesday, despite having to change venue after protesters stormed the debate chamber mid-session.

The proposal will see all judges in the country elected by popular vote rather than via an appointment system.

Supporters of the plan say it will make judges more democratically accountable, but critics say it will undermine constitutional checks and balances and strengthen the power of the ruling Left-wing populist party Morena.

Although a few countries hold elections for some judicial positions, the changes will make Mexico the first country in the world to allow voters to elect judges at all levels.

Footage showed dozens of demonstrators on Tuesday night flooding into the building, waving Mexican flags and chanting “traitors” at lawmakers who were in favour of the reform.

Security personnel used tear gas and sprayed foam from fire extinguishers at the protesters as they were attempting to push through a door into the building.

Protesters also formed a human chain to block access to the building before legislators switched venues to a sports complex, where they voted in favour of the proposal by 359 to 135 after a session that continued into Wednesday morning.

Although lawmakers still need to debate more than 600 of the bill’s details, Wednesday’s vote was the legislation’s last major hurdle and it is expected to pass when it moves to the senate.

The judicial overhaul was put into motion by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, who is in the final month of his six-year term in office.

Mr López Obrador enjoys substantial popularity in Mexico due to Left-wing populist measures, such as a generous pension programme. However, he has often been accused of riding roughshod over the democratic process.

In February, major protests broke out in Mexico City after he proposed dissolving the agency responsible for organising the country’s elections.

Leading Morena figures mobilised in support of Mr López Obrador’s judicial reform plan.

Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the lower house, said: “We went to the streets, we went knocking on doors, we went to towns.

“We told the people that if they voted for us we would vote for the reforms of President López Obrador.

“We did not deceive them, we did not deceive anyone.”

Claudia Sheinbaum, the president-elect, also passionately defended Mr López Obrador’s changes, arguing that the measures will ensure trust in a system that has long been plagued by corruption and nepotism.

Many critics agree that the current system requires reform, but warn that the government’s sweeping revamp will erode judicial independence.

“More than a judicial reform, this is an act of revenge – because the judiciary has been a counterweight to the decisions of the president,” said Patricia Flores, a lawmaker with the opposition Citizens’ Movement party.

“This would become a tool of political persecution,” said judge Juana Fuentes, a member of the federal judiciary who opposes the plan.

Ms Fuentes went on to say that judges could be told to make rulings in favour of the government under threat of being removed from their positions.

Legal experts have warned that the scale of the overhaul could see major problems in the short term.

“We’re going to see some very bad rulings at the beginning,” said Juan Jesús Garza Onofre, a constitutional law researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“There is going to be a learning curve that involves delaying processes that are already underway,” he added.

In August, Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico, said that the reform was a “major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy”, which led to the Mexican government pausing its relationship with the US embassy.

Germany is “leaderless and incapable,” the country’s opposition leader claimed on Tuesday night as he walked out of a key meeting with the government to discuss steps to tighten up border security.

Friedrich Merz, the head of the centre-Right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said the talks had failed to come up with concrete steps to control Germany’s borders.

He said: “The federal government is clearly hopelessly divided internally and cannot agree on effective measures. The federal government is incapable of action and leaderless.”

It came as neighbouring Poland strongly criticised Berlin’s earlier announcement that it would impose nationwide border checks from next Monday, with Donald Tusk, the country’s prime minister, calling it “unacceptable” and a “de facto suspension of the Schengen agreement on a large scale”.

However, in the Netherlands, Right-wing coalition partner Geert Wilders welcomed the restrictions and called for the same steps to be taken in his nation.

“The sooner the better,” he said on Tuesday afternoon in the Dutch parliament. “If Germany can do it, why can’t we?”

The German discussions on tougher border controls come following the Solingen knife attack on Aug 23, in which a Syrian migrant was arrested as a suspect.

At a press conference after the meeting, Nancy Faeser, the German interior minister, said attendees discussed a proposal to send asylum seekers trying to enter the country back to the first EU member state they entered.

“If we want to establish this as a good system now, we need more staff so that the federal police can manage it in the long term,” she said of the plan, which the CDU said did not go far enough.

Mr Merz has heaped pressure on Mr Scholz’s coalition to impose far stricter border controls and migration laws. 

Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, he had called for the “rejection of people at the German external borders on a comprehensive scale” if they did not have the correct paperwork.

His comments were echoed by the Christian Social Union, the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria, which demanded new border rules that would “fundamentally be about rejection at the border.”

Earlier on Monday, in an apparent bid to reassure voters and appease Mr Merz, Germany’s government announced it would impose additional checks at all land borders for six months, starting next Monday.

Germany is already carrying out extra border checks on its eastern frontiers with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, while additional checks with Austria have been in place since 2015.

However, it was announced on Monday that the checks would be extended to Germany’s Western-facing borders with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and also Denmark.

Germany is part of the EU’s open-border Schengen zone, where additional border checks are only permitted as a last resort for member states on national security grounds.

As well as Germany, there are seven other EU member states that have reintroduced temporary border controls: France, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden.

It came as a senior member of Germany’s Greens faction, which is in coalition with Chancellor Scholz, accused Mr Merz of using migration as a tool to “blackmail” the government.

“Friedrich Merz is behaving like a stubborn child,” said Irene Mihalic, the manager of the Greens’ parliamentary faction, as she referred to earlier rumours that suggested he might not attend Tuesday’s summit. “These blackmail attempts are just ridiculous,” she added.

Germany’s border announcement on Monday was welcomed by Bild, the country’s leading tabloid newspaper, which described it as a “victory for the majority of German citizens who have long been demanding stricter asylum rules.”

It added that the decision was a political boost for Mr Merz, who is seeking victory in next year’s national elections, because he had “forced the government into the asylum confrontation two weeks ago”.

A European Commission spokesman said reintroducing border controls should remain “strictly exceptional” and “necessary and proportionate” to counter threats to “public policy or internal security”.

“The commission is in touch with the German authorities,” they added, after saying Berlin had notified the commission of the move.

Asked if Brussels was worried about a domino effect spreading to other member states, the spokesman said they would not speculate until after the commission had assessed Berlin’s justification.

A British man killed by a Spaniard with a garden hoe belonged to an “expat hooligan” community, the suspect’s lawyer said.

Martin Allwright, 59, died in hospital from head injuries on Aug 19 after being assaulted by one of his neighbours in southern Spain.

José Ramos has admitted striking Mr Allwright with a garden hoe but claims that the Briton threatened him first and he had previously reported his neighbour to police.

José Ramón Cantalejo, defending, said his client was a Spaniard in his fifties with no criminal record who had co-operated with police investigators.

Mr Cantalejo said that Spaniards in villages like El Palacés de Zurgena in Almería – where the attack took place – “live in terror of these British residents, many of whom are complete hooligans”.

The village is an area popular with UK retirees.

The lawyer said many British people in the region “do not learn a single word of Spanish in 10 or 15 years and yet they think this is their territory.”

“These are people who sell their houses in Glasgow or Birmingham to retire here,” he added. “They live like royalty but they don’t adapt to the social reality of the country.”

Mr Allwright, from Exeter and whose wife has launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay legal fees for “justice”, caused the confrontation that led to the fatal assault, the lawyer claimed.

Mr Cantalejo said Mr Allwright advanced towards Mr Ramos and his wife with a stone in his hand and his “dangerous dogs”.

“All my client did was to put himself between this man and his wife, striking him with the first thing that came to hand,” he said.

The lawyer blamed the “lobby effect” of the 34,000-strong British community in Almería for pressuring the judge into remanding his client in custody despite his co-operation with the investigation.

Taylor Swift has officially endorsed Kamala Harris for president as she proudly claimed to be a “childless cat lady”.

The megastar shared her support for Ms Harris on Instagram after the end of the presidential debate, saying she “fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them”.

“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” the Shake It Off singer wrote.

She signed off her post to her 283 million Instagram followers by referring to herself as a “Childless Cat Lady” along with a picture of her holding one of her beloved cats.

It is a reference to comments previously made by JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, accusing “childless of cat ladies” of running the United States, a much-derided comment that helped to turn him into one of the least popular vice-presidential candidates in history.

Tim Walz has said he is “incredibly grateful” to have Swift’s endorsement. When asked about it on MSNBC he also made an appeal to “Swifties” to “get things going”.

Swift had complimented Ms Harris’s choice of vice-presidential candidate who she said had been “been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades”.

Her post had been liked nearly 2 million times within 25 minutes.

Swift said she had watched the debate and urged her fans to do their research “the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most”.

She said she was motivated to share her voting decision after an AI image of her falsely endorsing Trump was posted on his website.

“It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth,” she said.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, formerly Twitter, responded sardonically to Swift in a post on the platform.

“Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” he wrote.

Swift, who spent much of her career steering clear of mentioning politics over fear of isolating fans, came out in support of Joe Biden in 2020.

However, during this election cycle – her silence had weighed heavily.

Her endorsement of the Harris campaign comes at a critical time as both presidential hopefuls were largely neck-and-neck in the polls going into the debate. 

Swift, one of the most famous women in America, holds significant political sway owing to her enormous and fiercely loyal fan base.

When asked for his reaction to Swift’s endorsement in the spin room, Trump said: “I have no idea.”

It is not clear if the timing of the announcement was coordinated with the Harris campaign, but it played into the hands of the vice-president by helping to create a positive narrative for her in the aftermath of the first debate.

Mr Walz read the whole endorsement live on air during an MSNBC interview.

Celebrities have already had an impact on the race, with George Clooney’s opinion piece in The New York Times in July putting pressure on Joe Biden to step down.

Matt Damon, Ben Stiller and Lin-Manuel Miranda have also backed the Harris-Walz ticket.

But Trump thanked Brittany Mahomes, the wife of NFL star Patrick Mahomes and a close friend of Swift, for “defending him” after she liked pro-Trump posts on social media.

How far Swift’s endorsement will move voters remains to be seen, but she has had a seismic influence on popular culture this year, with her Eras tour literally causing small earthquakes because of the huge crowd sizes.

A man with severe learning disabilities jailed for shooting dead a shopkeeper has been cleared after 33 years.

Oliver Campbell spent 11 years in prison after being found guilty of killing Baldev Hoondle during a robbery at a Hackney off-licence on July 22 1990. He was released on licence in 2002.

Mr Campbell was 21 when he was jailed following a trial, having also been convicted of conspiracy to rob.

Three Court of Appeal judges ruled on Wednesday that Mr Campbell’s conviction was “unsafe”.

His case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, in 2022. Barristers told the court in February that “compelling” new evidence proved Mr Campbell “cannot be” the killer.

In their ruling, Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Bourne and Mrs Justice Stacey, said they had “concluded that the convictions are unsafe”.

He said: “We accept that, considered in the light of the fresh evidence, the rulings might be different.”

He continued: “A jury knowing of the fresh evidence would be considering the reliability of those confessions in a materially different context.

“In those circumstances, we cannot say that the fresh evidence could not reasonably have affected the decision of the jury to convict.”

‘I can start my life as an innocent man’

Following the judgment, Mr Campbell, now in his 50s, said: “The fight for justice is finally over after nearly 34 years. I can start my life as an innocent man.”

Mr Campbell suffered severe brain damage as an eight-month-old baby and continues to struggle with memory, concentration and retaining information.

His barrister, Michael Birnbaum KC, told the court earlier this year that there were “ample” grounds to find Mr Campbell’s conviction unsafe, suggesting that he was “badgered and bullied” by police into giving a false confession over his involvement.

Mr Birnbaum said that Mr Campbell’s learning disabilities meant he made admissions which were “simply absurd” and “nonsense”, and contained a “litany of inconsistencies” against the facts of the case.

The court heard that officers may have “deliberately lied” to adduce confessions from Mr Campbell, who was interviewed 14 times but in some cases did not have a solicitor or appropriate adult present.

Prof Gisli Hannes Gudjonsson, a forensic psychologist, also told judges that there was a “high risk” that Mr Campbell’s mental disabilities meant he gave a false confession as a form of “acquiescence” during “relentless” questioning.

Judges heard that jurors in the original trial were told the gunman wore a British Knights baseball cap, which was found a few hundred yards from the scene.

Mr Birnbaum said Mr Campbell had purchased the cap in the days before the killing, but hairs found inside it following the shooting were not his, and he was not picked out of an identity parade by Mr Hoondle’s son, despite him having come “face to face” with the gunman.

The barrister said: “The detectives were plainly convinced that, since he was the owner of the hat and had admitted a presence at the robbery, he must have been the shooter, and they were determined to get him to admit that fact.”

He continued: “[Mr Campbell believed] his least bad option was to admit it had all been an accident, and our suggestion is that he thought he could get away with doing that.”

Obese children as young as six could receive Ozempic-style weight-loss jabs after a “promising” first trial.

Slimming injections were found to lower children’s body mass index (BMI) by 7.4 per cent in the study to assess the benefits of the drugs on primary school children.

During the research, pupils aged between six and 12 with an average weight of just over 11 stone, or 70kg, took a 56-week course of the daily weight-loss jab liraglutide.

The drug is one of a class of treatments known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, which are already available on the NHS to treat adults with Type 2 diabetes or obesity.

It works in the same way as semaglutide, which is found in Ozempic and Wegovy, by mimicking the function of a hormone to make people feel fuller and reduce their appetite.

The trial, conducted by experts at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, involved 82 children defined as clinically obese with an average age of 10 and a BMI of 31.

Some 56 of the subjects took liraglutide and 26 received a placebo, while both were given individual diet advice and encouraged to exercise for at least 60 minutes a day.

After more than a year, the average BMI of the children who received the weight-loss jabs fell by 5.8 per cent – but increased by 1.6 per cent for those who were given the placebo, a difference of 7.4 per cent.

The children’s body weight grew by an average of 1.6 per cent for those who received liraglutide, compared with 10 per cent for those given the placebo.

The researchers said they expected some weight gain over the year as the children grew.

‘Considerable promise’

The findings open up the possibility that weight-loss injections could be made available to NHS patients in the future.

Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk manufactures both semaglutide and liraglutide, and is already seeking regulatory approval for the jabs to be prescribed to obese teenagers.

Other trials in children aged as young as six are also under way, including in the UK.

Prof Claudia Fox, the study’s lead author from the University of Minnesota’s Centre for Pediatric Obesity Medicine, said if childhood obesity was left untreated it “almost universally persists into adulthood and is associated with significant ill health, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and, for some, premature death”.

There is currently no medical treatment for paediatric obesity beyond lifestyle advice.

Prof Fox said there was no consensus on what a meaningful reduction in BMI amounted to, but that 5 per cent or more had previously been associated with improving some obesity-related illnesses.

In the trial, almost half of the children on liraglutide saw their BMI reduce by at least five per cent, compared to fewer than one in 10 of those who took the placebo.

Researchers reported similar side effects to those seen in older cohorts, including gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, some of which were deemed “serious” in nature.

Both groups of children saw their BMI and body weight increase once the trial had ended.

Prof Fox said the findings “offer considerable promise to children living with obesity” who are currently told “to ‘try harder’ with diet and exercise”.

‘Risk of negative consequences’

Dr Simon Cork, a senior lecturer in physiology at Anglia Ruskin University, said giving the drugs to children was “complicated by the fact that children are actively growing, and therefore there is a possibility for greater risk, particularly with regards to appetite suppression, since such medication has the potential to stunt growth.”

He said more studies would be needed “to ensure that appetite suppression in these children does not have unforeseen negative consequences”.

The findings were presented to the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) and have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The results of the first study into new weight-loss pills were also presented at EASD’s annual meeting.

Amycretin, also developed by Novo Nordisk, has a two-pronged approach as it is both a GLP-1 and amylin, so mimics two separate hormones involved in appetite regulation.

The 12-week trial in adults found it reduced body weight by between 10.4 per cent and 13.1 per cent, depending on dose, compared to just 1.1 per cent for those who received placebo pills.

The researchers said more studies were needed to test its safety and effectiveness over a longer period.

The Strictly Come Dancing tour featuring the show’s professional dancers will not go ahead next year.

As the BBC prepares to release a review into allegations of behind-the-scenes bullying on the TV series, promoters announced the Strictly the Professionals tour would be “taking a break” in 2025.

The theatrical tour was launched in 2010 and last took place in May this year. The line-up included Graziano Di Prima, who later left Strictly after admitting that he had kicked his dance partner, Zara McDermott, during rehearsals.

The Sun reported that the tour had been cancelled in order to avoid any more bad publicity. “Strictly is trying to rebuild as a brand and the Professionals tour was known as a hotbed of drinking and fun.

“The pro dancers work hard and play hard but, with everything that’s happened recently, it seems axing it eliminates the chance of any further issues,” a source told the newspaper.

Tour insiders disputed the claim, saying that many of the professionals were unavailable because they are performing in their own shows next year.

A spokesperson for the tour said: “Due to artist availability, the UK tour of Strictly The Professionals is taking a break next year, and plans are currently being finalised for 2026.”

The Strictly tour featuring this year’s celebrity contestants will go ahead as planned, they added.

The BBC is finalising its review into allegations made by Amanda Abbington, a contestant on last year’s show, against her partner Giovanni Pernice.

She alleges that he was abusive to her during rehearsals. Pernice strongly denies the claims and has said he is confident that he will be cleared. He left the show in the summer and announced this week that he has joined its Italian counterpart, Ballando con le Stelle.

The new series of Strictly starts on Saturday night, with this year’s contestants insisting that they are unaffected by the scandal.

Sam Quek, the Olympic medallist and former Question of Sport team captain, said: “There’s two sides to the truth. It shouldn’t take the shine off Strictly. It’s a positive show.”

The Environment Secretary “cannot pretend to understand” the countryside because he represents Croydon and his planned funding cuts will harm nature, the Tories have claimed.

Steve Barclay, the shadow environment secretary, claimed the Government was already failing farmers and unable to comprehend the challenges facing rural communities.

Steve Reed, who has headed the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs since Labour’s election victory in July, is the MP for Streatham and Croydon North. 

He was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, and was a councillor in south London for a decade before first entering Parliament in 2012.

It came as four former environment secretaries warned that Labour’s expected cuts to the farming budget risked harming British nature and food supplies.

Writing for The Telegraph, Mr Barclay said: “The truth is Labour don’t understand rural communities, and it never will. This is the party that chose Steve Reed, the member for Croydon North and the former Lambeth Council leader, to make decisions about the future of our countryside.

“Labour’s last three leaders have come from the same square mile of north London… Of course there is nothing wrong with living in and representing a city or major town, but you cannot pretend to understand the unique set of challenges that rural people face.”

In the last Parliament, the seat represented by Mr Reed was the 497th least forest-covered constituency in the UK, with tree cover of just three per cent.

He has previously admitted that Labour was “too detached” from rural voters over recent decades and promised it will respect rural communities under Sir Keir Starmer.

The Environment Secretary has promised a veterinary agreement with the European Union, as well as access to cheaper, clean energy and fewer food imports.

Meanwhile, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Therese Coffey and Theresa Villiers used a letter to The Telegraph to urge the Government to reconsider taking a reported £100 million away from its nature-friendly farmland budget.

The cutbacks prompted an outcry from nature groups when reported by The Guardian last week, and could mean around 239,000 fewer hectares for sustainable agriculture.

In a letter to The Telegraph, Mr Gove, Ms Leadsom, Ms Coffey and Ms Villiers called on Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, to increase the overall farming budget in line with inflation.

“The European Union paid our farmers according to how much land they managed, which was poorly targeted to support food security, harmful to the environment and poor value for taxpayers’ money,” the letter said.

“Using the freedoms afforded by Brexit, the previous Conservative government delivered a once-in-a-generation transformation to how we support our farmers.

“Farmers across England are now paid public money to deliver public goods, like cleaner water and healthier soils, alongside food production. This can help them to become more resilient to nature loss – the biggest long-term threat to our food security.”

‘Keep farming budget intact’

The former Cabinet ministers added that although such schemes were becoming “increasingly popular”, the reported Labour cutbacks meant they were “now under threat”.

“This cut has been estimated to reduce the amount of farmland under the new schemes by 239,000 hectares in England at a time when food security and our natural environment have never been more important,” they said.

“When it comes to supporting farmers, strengthening food security and restoring nature, the Government needs to put its money where its mouth is and keep the farming budget intact or – better still – increase it in line with inflation.”

The letter was also signed by six former Tory ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – Sir Robert Goodwill, Mark Spencer, Victoria Prentis, Rebecca Pow, Lord Goldsmith and David Rutley.

Kitty Thompson, the senior nature programme manager at the Conservative Environment Network, said: “Three of the new Environment Secretary’s stated priorities depend directly on the nature-friendly farming budget.

“The new Government’s plan to cut this key budget for delivering long-term food security, nature recovery and flood resilience is as short-sighted as it is foolish.”

Labour has already turned its backs on farmers

It has only been two months, but the Labour Government has already revealed a worrying lack of understanding when it comes to British farmers and rural communities, writes Steve Barclay.

It has shown a troubling detachment from the real issues faced by the hundreds of thousands of people who live and work in the countryside.

Britain’s food security is more important than ever. It’s a key part of our national security, making sure we have a regular supply of food in the face of global challenges. 

British farmers are crucial to this effort, working hard to keep food on our tables while also caring for the environment. But just weeks into Government, Labour is already threatening to undermine all the critical work we did.

Reports have already emerged that Labour is considering cutting the farming budget by £100 million at the same time the Government has found £11 billion to hand to its trade union paymasters.

Lax approach to countryside

This isn’t about fixing some bogus “black hole” Labour has conjured up to cover up its planned tax rises – this is about a clear political choice that puts rural people at the bottom of the pile.

Reducing support for farmers now could destabilise the industry and put our food security at risk. Not only does Labour not understand the impact this will have on rural places, but it seems like it does not care.

Labour’s lax approach to the countryside goes well beyond its agricultural policies. Instead of taking a common sense approach and looking into innovative ways we could utilise urban spaces, Ed Miliband has pushed ahead with his plans to pave over the countryside with solar panels.

This will put some of our highest-quality agricultural land at risk, and once again shows a clear disregard for the long-term health of our countryside. Farmers work hard to keep our land productive and sustainable, but Labour would rather plaster our hardest-working land with plastic.

Unique set of challenges

But this should really come as no surprise. The truth is that Labour doesn’t understand rural communities, and it never will. This is the party that chose Steve Reed, the member for Croydon North and the former Lambeth Council leader, to make decisions about the future of our countryside.

Labour’s last three leaders have come from the same square mile of north London. The majority of its Cabinet are from or have urban constituencies.

Of course there is nothing wrong with living in and representing a city or major town, but you cannot pretend to understand the unique set of challenges that rural people face.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party is and has always been committed to truly supporting Britain’s rural communities. We understand that farmers need sensible policies, and sometimes a helping hand, to succeed.

Effective conservation and environmental care need to consider the realities of farming, balancing productivity with sustainability.

We’ll stand up for farmers

We will always stand up for our farmers, and we will continue to bang the drum for our rural communities so that farmers get the support they need rather than face new obstacles from Government policies.

Sadly, it seems Labour isn’t willing to listen to what rural people need. So far its approach isn’t about working with farmers and respecting the challenges they face because it doesn’t fully understand or even appreciate the role that farmers play, not just in our rural economy but in our national economy too.

It is time for Labour to wake up to the fact that its plans have put the countryside on a collision course. While the Government has turned its backs on farmers, we are ready to stand up for rural Britain.

Steve Barclay is the shadow environment secretary

A tiny species of fish checks itself out in the mirror before picking a fight, scientists have found.

Researchers have discovered that the bluestreak cleaner wrasse – which is about the size of a human finger – can not only recognise its own reflection but may also have an internal awareness of its own body.

Lab experiments led by a team at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan revealed the cleaner wrasse will check its body size in a mirror before deciding whether to “attack” other fish.

Researchers said the findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, provide “important clues” on how self-awareness evolved.

Taiga Kobayashi, a researcher at Osaka Metropolitan University, said: “The results that fish can use the mirror as a tool can help clarify the similarities between human and non-human animal self-awareness.”

Chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants, pigeons and magpies are among a handful of species that have passed the mirror self-recognition (MSR) test, a classic test for determining self-awareness.

It involves putting marks on the body – in places where the animals cannot usually see, such as the chest or face – using paint or stickers, and then placing the animals in front of the mirror to see whether they examine these marks.

However, the authors said that this classic MSR test does not demonstrate “private” self-awareness, which is more sophisticated and involves focusing on internal aspects such as goals and intentions.

Mental image of their body

Previous research has shown that cleaner wrasse – which provide a “cleaning service” to larger fish by removing parasites, dead skin, and other debris from their bodies – can pass the MSR test.

But the researchers wanted to know whether these creatures have the ability to construct a mental image of their body after looking at themselves in the mirror and make decisions based on this mental representation.

So they selected 15 cleaner wrasse fish, seven of which had access to a mirror inside an aquarium while the rest were used as controls.

These fish were then presented with cut-out photos of a different group of fish that were either slightly (10 per cent) bigger or slightly (10 per cent) smaller.

The team found that the cleaner wrasse previously exposed to mirrors were less aggressive towards larger and same-sized fish in the photos but were more hostile towards the smaller fish.

When presented with photos of larger fish, some of the cleaner wrasse were observed swimming parallel to the mirror repeatedly.

The authors wrote: “These findings suggest that these fish may have assessed their body size to decide whether to exhibit aggressive behaviour toward the intimidating larger photograph.”

The researchers said that this implies cleaner wrasse may be capable of metacognition – which is an individual’s ability to reflect on their thought process to plan and make decisions – but added further research is needed to confirm this.

Over the course of three minutes, the Wales family are barely apart. Holding hands, they walk side by side, sometimes with arms around one another, through a wheat field, a wood, and across a beach. 

Princess Charlotte, nine, is glued to her mother’s side; Prince Louis leans comfortably into his father in an easy embrace unthinkable in publicly-released images of royal generations past.

In one precious second, the Princess of Wales clasps the head of her eldest son, suddenly tall, to her chest and kisses it, her spare hand drawing him in closer and closer.

This is a video for the ages. The intimacy captured in the film, and its cinematic style, makes it unlike anything the public has ever seen before. Yet there is also a familiarity: it brings to life some of the warm family photographs previously released by the Waleses and also harks back to archive footage of the late Queen and Philip with their young family.

The film, one suspects, will become a treasured family memento to be watched fondly together in years and decades to come.

The Princess of Wales, reading aloud her own words directly to the world, speaks candidly about the “complex, scary and unpredictable” life of being on a “cancer journey”, bringing her “face to face” with her own vulnerabilities.

“With that,” she says, comes a “new perspective on everything.”

Above all, the world heard, the Princess’ months of chemotherapy have left her “grateful for the simple yet important things in life, which so many of us often take for granted.

“Of simply loving and being loved. Doing what I can to stay cancer-free is now my focus.”

This was not a video filmed by committee, workshopped by Kensington Palace aides and edited with the help of focus groups.

It was, sources said, a “creative outlet” for the Princess, who has chosen to take control of her own message in a public life which has seen her cede so much.

“This is her,” says a friend.

The Princess is now, they say, working out what is right for her future, and that of her family.

“This is a personal message from her,” says one source, who notes approvingly that her voice has grown in confidence since first setting out to speak directly to the public, when she revealed details of her illness in a video message released in March.

This was a video intended, in part, to answer questions being asked by the public and media, among them: How is the Princess’s health? How are her children coping? When will she be seen again in public?

Answers to some of those questions come through loud and clear. The Princess confirmed she has finished chemotherapy, she is well enough – sometimes – to fully embrace family life, and her children are being looked after in every possible sense.

Other questions, seasoned royal observers point out, remain – in particular, the role the Princess envisages playing in public life in the future.

“My path to healing and full recovery is long and I must continue to take each day as it comes,” the Princess says.

“I am however looking forward to being back at work and undertaking a few more public engagements in the coming months when I can.”

What that will look like is uncertain. Save for two key appearances – Remembrance Sunday and her annual carol concert at Westminster Abbey, which will take place unless her health changes – the rest of her diary over the coming months is unconfirmed for obvious reasons, to allow for cancellations without causing alarm.

The Princess’s work, including her many public appearances and a flagship project focused on improving the lives of young children, is the constant that has run through her public life, says one palace source, who describes the Wales’ approach to Royal life as an “unwavering commitment to duty and service”.

“She’s said on many occasions that her work does bring her great joy,” adds one who knows the couple.

“Whether it will be work in the same way now as it was in 2023, time will tell. For now, it’s going to have to be different.”

“Perhaps there will be a new approach and a different balance,” says a second source. “But the important thing is, she’ll be back.”

“The public understands the position she’s in, I think they get it,” says another. “People want her to balance and not rush back.”

The cancer journey is “complex, scary and unpredictable for everyone,” the Princess said in her message.

It is also, in many cases, a waiting game in which the end of treatment heralds the start of more uncertainty and worry.

Multiple charities offer specific help for the period of life after a patient’s treatment has ended, from support groups to “cancer coaches”.

One, Life after Cancer, says 92 per cent of its users admit to finding life after cancer harder than cancer treatment. Its support system is designed to alleviate the “risk of serious mental distress” after treatment and help people “build a positive life after their cancer experience”.

If the Princess cannot join a support group with such a high public profile, she appears to have absorbed their messages.

“When your treatment ends, you may feel relieved,” Macmillan tells cancer patients in its printed advice. “But you may still have side-effects from treatment and other emotions to cope with. You will need time to find out what is now normal for you. It can take time to adjust.

“You may also be thinking about positive changes you want to make. These might include focusing on your well-being or planning some things to look forward to.”

In the case of the Prince and Princess of Wales, one source says: “As she says herself, this has changed their perspective on everything.”

If the public, including those who have followed the monarchy for decades, were taken aback by the intimacy of the Wales family video, those who have spent time with them recently are not.

“I think this personal approach is something you will see going forward,” says a source.

The video, shot by film-maker Will Warr, shows more of the Waleses than anyone is accustomed to: affectionate, at home, private interactions such as the Prince laughing as he picks a caterpillar out of Charlotte’s hair.

In some ways, the video shows the Princess putting her own advice into action.

“When I was growing up I was very lucky,” she said in 2017, at the start of her work on improving early years childhood in Britain. “My family was the most important thing to me. My parents taught me about the importance of qualities like kindness, respect, and honesty, and I realise how central values like these have been to me throughout my life.”

The Middletons make a rare appearance in the video, an acknowledgement that their constant support, always appreciated, has become invaluable this year.

Carole and Michael are filmed playing a lively game of cards with their grandchildren, who show every sign of having the same settled, stable, much-loved life the young Kate enjoyed.

The Princess’ belief in the healing powers of being in nature is also well documented, illustrated at length here with wheat fields, hay bales, sand dunes, sea and trees all around.

Scenes of the children running and laughing on the beach come more than half a century after footage of the schoolboy Prince Charles and his younger sister Anne in 1957 on Holkham Beach, Norfolk, with the Queen and Prince Philip.

There is no change in policy on the Wales children’s privacy, a palace source emphasised. The Prince and Princess, like any parents, will continue to decide how much they are willing to share with the public – albeit on a worldwide scale.

If Catherine has often seen her role in Royal life as supporting – supporting her husband who will one day be King, the eldest son who will follow in his footsteps, and the two younger siblings who must find their way in public life – then this year has been the time she has needed and accepted help of her own.

Prince William, who has this year come to terms with cancer diagnoses for his father and his wife, wants nothing more than to protect her, friends say, and give her peace as she recovers.

“Like any husband, he wants to support his wife,” says a source. “And at this stage, a big part of that is supporting her to do the things that bring her joy while she is on this journey.”

The Prince, it is said, has always been conscious of how much has been asked of his wife, who was born into relatively ordinary circumstances and has now spent 13 years in the spotlight of a future Queen.

He would rather shoulder criticism than see his family’s privacy breached. When he missed the memorial for his godfather, King Constantine of Greece, for a “personal matter” in February, he preferred to weather a baffled and critical press than allow his office to hint at any health problems being experienced by the Princess behind the scenes.

When in April, a charity volunteer at a food distribution engagement asked the Prince to look after his wife, he placed a hand on the volunteer’s shoulder and promised: “I will.”

As aides have pointed out repeatedly over the years, the Princess’s work will be measured in decades – a lifelong dedication to duty unlike any other career. Now, this logic acts as a reminder that she must be allowed to heal fully – physically and emotionally – before she considers a wholesale return.

William, newly returned to work after the summer, will continue to follow his usual schedule: three or four official engagements a week, with further work behind the scenes in Windsor on his key causes, while the couple’s children are at school.

“The Prince is going to continue to balance supporting his wife and his children through an incredibly tough time and his important work,” says a palace source.

The Princess may make a sporadic appearance in the Court Circular between now and Christmas, and continues to be briefed on her early years project championing support for children aged under five. 

There is no sign she intends to speak further about the specifics of her illness in the near future, her medical privacy still an uncrossable red line.

“I do hope that I am able to represent you all once again very soon,” is all she could tell the Irish Guards, of which she is honorary colonel, in a letter in June apologising for missing a parade rehearsal. That intention, sources say, is unchanged.

For now, sources can only say that the Princess will have a “light programme” going forward with a “handful” of engagements before the end of the year.

What comes next in her public life, a source says, only “time will tell”.

“I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty,” the Princess said in June.

“I enter this new phase of recovery with a renewed sense of hope and appreciation of life,” she says now.

Two minutes into the video, the six-year-old Prince Louis is seen scaling a tree 15ft above the ground.

His mother watches him from below, calm and encouraging. If she is inwardly nervous, her children will never know.

“A third of Britons” wear a keffiyeh, a policeman has claimed.

The Met Police officer told attendees of a vigil for Israeli victims of Hamas last weekend that the traditional scarf from Palestine, often used as a headdress, was worn by “around 30 per cent of people in the UK”.

During an event on Sept 7 at the Israeli embassy to mark 11 months since the Hamas terror attack, one attendee objected to the presence of a man they believed was a pro-Palestinian protester because he was wearing a keffiyeh.

In video obtained by The Telegraph, the attendee calls on police to act, saying: “Tell him to walk away, you didn’t see me going to the pro-Palestinian rallies, did you?”

The officer replies: “There’s a lot more of him than there is of you, alright?”

A second attendee at the vigil notes there is an exclusion zone for a pro-Palestinian march taking place in central London at the same time.

‘He’s observing, he’s not doing anything’

“It’s only one person here, I don’t know if he’s part of any group or not,” the policeman says. “How do I know he’s part of a group?”

One of the vigil participants replies “look what he’s wearing”, to which the policeman says: “Are you aware that that is worn by around 30 per cent of people around the UK anyway? Are you aware of it?”

The video then shows two people, not part of the vigil, suggesting that the man was part of a “keffiyeh march” and that he had been part of the pro-Palestinian protest that took place on the same day.

“He’s observing your demo, that’s it, he’s standing and observing you,” the policeman says in the video. Insisting that it was his “opinion” that almost one in three people wear a keffiyeh, he adds: “He’s observing, he’s not doing anything.”

The video cuts out seconds after a second policeman tells the group that they cannot film the officers, with one attendee of the vigil saying “I can film what I like”.

Pro-Palestinian marches have taken place on an almost weekly basis in central London since the October 7 attack and the subsequent Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Many activists have worn the keffiyeh during these demonstrations, as well as at university encampments set up earlier this year.

Met sources stressed that the exchange appeared to refer to a single protester, rather than a wider group of activists.

The Met Police said officers were aware of the video and working to establish the full details.

Donald Trump took most of the headlines after a bruising encounter with Kamala Harris in their first debate as presidential candidates.

The confrontation was billed as one of the most consequential moments of the race so far.

In the end people got what they came for, Ms Harris goading Trump, and the former president reacting angrily at times.

• Latest presidential election polls: Harris v Trump

Our writers have been predicting the overall winner of the election since early this year, periodically plotting their choices on a sliding scale of likelihood. 

After watching the debate they have now updated their predictions below.

Kamala Harris and her campaign routinely say she is the underdog in the race. That isn’t merely an exercise in tempering expectations. They would be foolish to think otherwise given her late entry. But Ms Harris’s debate performance has certainly given them reasons for optimism. 

She surpassed expectations and even succeeded in getting under Trump’s skin, provoking him into rants that will have done him no favours with undecided voters. 

Several Republican allies of Trump privately conceded he had a disappointing night. The debate is unlikely to have dramatically altered the course of the election. But with the race in a virtual tie, every opportunity matters, and the underdog’s team will be facing the next 54 days feeling more hopeful than they were on Tuesday.

Tuesday night’s debate was a clear victory for Kamala Harris. A snap poll from CNN showed 67 per cent of viewers say she won. 

Her performance could matter: one in three voters said they “needed to learn more” about her ahead of the election. A strong showing could help voters build that image. 

As ever, the impact of debates shouldn’t be overstated. Even the knock-out debate in June, which just 31 per cent thought Biden won, failed to shift voting intention significantly, according to analysis by Ipsos. 

But in a race this tight, where the results could come down to just thousands of votes in key states, a small movement in voting intention will make all the difference.

The debate might not move the polls, but it does reaffirm Kamala Harris’s message that hers is the “non-weird” ticket and will boost enthusiasm among her supporters. Hitherto, Donald Trump was the change candidate. Suddenly he is the old face and she is the new. 

The Democrat strategy of avoiding sit-downs and betting all on a solid debate performance, possibly the only one we’ll see, might pay off. That said, her victory was really one of style. On issues such as immigration and the economy, only skirted over in Philly, Trump remains favoured.

But we are where we were in 2016: polls close with a likely Democrats advantage in popular vote; a Republican advantage in the electoral college. So long as the Democrats drill down into the blue-collar vote in the midwest, as they did in 2020, I guess they slip home. It’s Groundhog Day (again).

Donald Trump was put firmly on the defensive on Tuesday night, with Kamala Harris backing him into a corner on key issues like abortion and January 6. His campaigners will surely be close to giving up their pleas for the former president to “stay on message”.

His comments about migrants eating cats would appear to be a major blunder. But the comments about Springfield, Ohio, should not be dismissed out of hand. Immigration is a massive problem for the Democratic campaign, with parts of small-town America resenting rapid demographic change they rightly or wrongly associate with the Biden administration. 

Democrats might be pleased with Ms Harris’s showing, especially after the Biden disaster, but her persistent problem of dodging her changing positions was once again on show.

Will this debate change the mind of Pennsylvania swing voters? It’s unlikely. Independent voters are still very much in play – for both candidates.

Kamala Harris’s victory in the ABC News debate was a significant moment in the narrative of this campaign, but it is important to remember that most voters have already made up their minds at this stage in the race. 

The electoral college means that fewer than a million voters in a country of 350 million will actually decide this election, and it seems unlikely their minds will be significantly changed by what they saw on the debate stage on Tuesday. 

My prediction is unchanged – Ms Harris is marginally more likely to win, but Donald Trump is very much still in the race.

Methodology

Our experts are asked to plot their decision on a scale of 100, where 0 is a Harris landslide, 50 is a tie and 100 is a Trump landslide.

At an air base on the outskirts of Lipetsk in western Russia, Vladimir Putin’s elite fighter jocks prove their aerobatic worth at Moscow’s ‘Top Gun’ aviator school.

Located within range of Ukraine’s British and American-supplied long-range missiles, the cream of the Russian air force could soon find themselves under a cross-border missile barrage if Sir Keir Starmer and Joe Biden agree to unlock restrictions on Kyiv for strikes deep into Russia.

Russia may well have already begun evacuating the fighter school, especially after storage facilities at the air base were hit by drones in August. 

But giving Kyiv the green light for long-range missile strikes will no doubt affect the course of the war.

The Institute for the Study of War has identified at least 225 potential targets that Ukraine could hit immediately. 

These include military airfields, training bases, logistics hubs and manufacturing sites that all play a role in supporting Russia’s war machine.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, has repeatedly pleaded for the removal of restrictions on the weapons. 

David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, and Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, were in Kyiv on Wednesday to discuss the issue with the country’s leader.

However, experts have warned that granting Ukraine permission to use French and British Storm Shadow missiles and US ATACMS missiles would not be a silver bullet.

“We should not over-egg what this will do,” Matthew Savill, the military sciences director for the Royal United Services Institute, told The Telegraph. “I’m afraid some of this talk of turning the tide and those kinds of comments are just overblown on what Storm Shadow will achieve.”

There are also doubts as to how many Storm Shadow missiles Ukraine has left in its arsenal, which have been used by Kyiv within Ukraine since the spring of last year.

Britain no longer produces Storm Shadow weaponry in large quantities, and French production of its sister missile – Scalp-EG – is on “life support”, Colby Badhwar, a security and defence analyst, said.

If there are genuine shortages of the missiles, Ukraine will have to pick its targets very carefully, so as not to waste the remaining resources, Mr Savill said.

The second issue is the range at which both Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles can operate.

While both are capable of hitting targets comfortably almost 200 miles away, US intelligence officials believe Russia has moved up to 90 per cent of its aircraft out of reach.

However, the further Russian jets are from the front line, the fewer sorties they can fly – an indirect benefit of having Western missiles covering large areas of land.

Freeing Ukraine from restrictions on the weapons could also lead to other tactical and political benefits.

For instance, the decision would send a signal that London and Washington no longer worry about Russian retaliation. And could this finally convince Germany to offer up its Taurus cruise missiles for Kyiv to use within Ukraine?

Other weapons could also be unlocked, such as the US-manufactured JASSM missile, which could enable Ukraine to strike targets 190 miles into Russia, including about 30 airbases.

Kyiv has shown it can attack deep inside Russia using its own domestically-produced attack drones, which have hit hundreds of sites since autumn 2022.

These indigenous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), however, do not carry warheads capable of penetrating through hardened structures.

While Russia does sometimes leave ammunition or fighter aircraft in the open, it uses bunkers reinforced with thick layers of concrete to protect its assets – which Storm Shadow’s warhead could punch through.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, recently told The Telegraph that this very argument had been put forward by officials trying to convince Sir Keir Starmer to unlock the use of the missiles.

American-supplied ATACMS – also known as the Army Tactical Missile System – would be used in a different way.

ATACMS are ballistic missiles fitted with cluster munitions, which scatter thousands of small bomblets over a target and would be better suited to disabling runways at Russian airfields or hitting troop gatherings in the open.

Models fitted with the unitary warhead provide the ability to destroy less-protected single targets, like air defence or electronic warfare systems, also in the open.

To be truly effective, long-range missile launches would have to be combined with advances by Ukraine’s ground forces.

“If you’re not making progress on the ground, the pressure behind the lines is tolerable,” Mr Savill said.

Ukraine has shown that it is capable of putting Russian forces under significant pressure in Crimea and the Black Sea area with aerial attacks, but has never been able to double down with manoeuvres on the ground.

The long-range attacks launched ahead of Kyiv’s failed summer counter-offensive last year also proved ineffective because Ukrainian forces could not penetrate Russia’s ground defences.

Cross-border strikes into Russia would only allow Ukraine to take advantage on the ground in a few select areas of the battlefield – Russia’s southern Kursk region and the north-eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv.

Protracted discussions over whether to grant Kyiv permission have also come at a cost.

Briefings in Washington and the visit to the Ukrainian capital by Mr Lammy and Mr Blinken have acted as a public sign-posting that a decision on usage of the missiles is likely.

This means the element of surprise has been removed from the equation.

Moscow has already signalled that it expects a decision to be made by the UK and US, and it did so before anything had been publicly stated by London or Washington.

The Kremlin on Wednesday said it would respond with “an appropriate response” if the US did allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range missiles.

A grandmother died after being struck on the head by a rugby ball as she watched her grandson play, an inquest heard.

Jennifer Selwood, 69, suffered a bleed on the brain after being struck in the accident at Taunton RFC in Somerset in January 2020.

She was taken to Musgrove Park Hospital on the morning of January 12 and later transferred to Southmead Hospital in Bristol, where she died on January 25.

The inquest in Wells, Somerset, heard Mrs Selwood had diabetes and the blood disorder aplastic anaemia, which would cause bleeding and clotting problems if she suffered an unexpected trauma.

Mrs Selwood’s husband, Colin, told the hearing that he and his wife were watching their grandson play when they moved position to a gravel path linking two adjacent pitches.

He said they were standing next to each other when his wife was hit by a ball from the adjacent pitch, where another youth team was warming up.

‘Collapsed to the ground’

“She was struck. She just made a groan and collapsed to the ground, and I went down to support her,” Mr Selwood said.

“People came across and asked if she wanted a chair and water, and that sort of thing.

“I think there was an off-duty doctor in attendance, and they just told me to stay there and hold the back of her head, which is what I did.”

Asked whether he saw his wife being struck by the ball, Mr Selwood replied: “Not really because I was facing the same way as Jennifer was.

“I just heard a thud and she went down. As far as I know, the ball hit her on the back of the head and she went down.”

Mr Selwood said there were no signs to say they should not stand there, and he was not aware of any activity taking place on the pitch behind them.

‘Trying to sit up’

The inquest also heard from Mrs Selwood’s son, Dan, who was a youth coach at the club, when he became aware of the incident and ran over.

“She was quite dazed, so I went over to her, and she was trying to sit up at that point. I just helped and supported her to do so,” he said.

“When I was with Mum she started complaining of pain and started rubbing the back of her neck. She started to drift quite quickly.”

The inquest heard Mrs Selwood was undergoing long-term hospital treatment for diabetes and aplastic anaemia.

‘Bleeding into the brain’

Dr Sarah Allford, a consultant haematologist, had been treating Mrs Selwood and said she would have been at “risk of significant bleeding” in the event of a trauma or surgery.

“The impacts of the rugby ball would, therefore, have been sufficient to cause her greater bleeding problems than someone with a normal platelet count,” she said.

“Bleeding into the brain in the context of low platelet counts is very serious.

“In summary, Jennifer was more likely to suffer a significant bleed caused by the impact because her platelets were lowered due to the aplastic anaemia.

“Any bleeding had the potential to proceed more rapidly and to be more persistent, with an increased risk of morbidity and mortality.”

The hearing continues.

A 15-year-old killed an elderly man just 30 minutes after he had been freed by police for attacking a shopkeeper with a knife.

The teenager punched Patrick Colquhoun, 70, who fell backwards and suffered a fatal injury when his head hit the road as a result of the attack in Victoria Road, in Glasgow’s Govanhill, on April 12.

The boy had earlier the same day struck Nadeen Mohammed with a blade at the 65-year-old’s off licence.

The teenager – who cannot be identified because of his age – appeared in the dock at the High Court in Glasgow on Tuesday.

He pleaded guilty, via John Scullion KC, to the culpable homicide, the Scottish equivalent to manslaughter, of Mr Colquhoun, and also admitted assaulting Mr Mohammed.

He is currently detained at a secure unit and will be sentenced next month.

Boy ‘had knife concealed in trousers’

The attack on Mr Mohammed occurred after the boy and a friend had gone to the store in Govanhill around 4pm on April 12. They demanded the shopkeeper and his son “come outside”.

Instead, the men told them to leave. Mr Mohammed then followed them before there was an altercation.

Angela Gray KC, prosecuting, said: “The boy removed a knife from the waistband of his trousers and made a slashing motion towards Mr Mohammed, striking him on the arm.”

It led to the boy being arrested that night. He was later released, having given an undertaking to attend at Glasgow Sheriff Court on April 30. Miss Gray said the boy was picked up by his mother, but jumped out of her car after becoming angry with her.

Around the same time, Mr Colquhoun had left his local bar, the Queen’s Park Cafe, to visit a takeaway.

At 11.42pm, after collecting his food, Mr Colquhoun was seen standing behind a car rented by the boy’s father.

CCTV captured the teenager coming into the street and accusing the pensioner of urinating on the vehicle.

Miss Gray said: “A witness saw the boy go towards Mr Colquhoun and punch him on the head.”

The boy then walked off as members of the public rushed to help the victim.

At one stage, the boy’s father is seen on CCTV moving the car away as a person performs chest compressions on Mr Colquhoun, who suffered a brain bleed, a large skull fracture and bruising.

The fact Mr Colquhoun had been drinking may have triggered a brain condition which could have been a “a potential contributing factor” in the death.

Lord Harrower deferred sentencing for a background report until October 18 in Edinburgh.